This isn't very much reading. It will, though, require close attention and good note-taking, especially since the assignment offers us a chance to get ready for the upcoming presentations, which will ask you to exercise your skill at two things:
- Epideictic, or "show" rhetoric, specifically, in the form of an encomium, a "praise speech," where the subject of praise is also your addressee.
- Figured rhetoric, generally understood as speech with a semi-hidden (only semi-hidden!) agenda.
Quiz Response Prompt
In preparation for the upcoming presentations, this class meeting is mostly going to be devoted to work-shopping a rough draft for an encomium praising the parasite from the Libanius reading (see below). Thus for your journal entry, please:
- Write down some advice you believe the parasite needs to hear, whether he likes it or not. This will be the (semi-)hidden agenda of your figured rhetoric and the main point of the speech.
- However challenging it might be, think of things to praise about our parasite, things that he and others would buy into — why should we admire parasites generally and this parasite in particular?
- Think of how to use #2 (praise) as a delivery mechanism for #1 (advice). How do you get a parasite to listen to your advice without the parasite taking offence or feeling disrespected or under-appreciated? See below for some ideas. . . .
Readings Access
This Study Guide
Including the passage quoted below, from Philostratus' Lives of the Sophists, as well as notes on topics, authors, and texts.
The Encomium section of the Progumnasmata Page
Burton Silva Rhetoricae
Brief entries on encomium and exordia ("introductions").
Menander Rhetor Treatise 1
- Introduction, on epideictic genre. Pages 21-25 Loeb
Pseudo-Dionysius Art of Rhetoric
- "How to Compose Addresses," pages 407-415 Loeb. Useful for its discussion of the topics of praise speeches
Demetrius On Style
- Sections 287-296, pages 509-517 Loeb, on "verbal innuendo," to eskhēmatismenon, what we'll call "figured rhetoric"
Libanius Declamations 28, "The disappointed diner-out"
Pages 130-134, from:
Russell, D. A. 1996. Libanius. Imaginary Speeches: A Selection of Declamations. London: Duckworth.
Libanius' Twenty-eighth Declamation demonstrates the use of figured rhetoric, the art of saying not exactly what you mean.
Epideictic Genre: Historical Overview
Classical Athens (400s-300s BCE)
Pericles
The first epideictic speeches we have date from the 400s BCE. Those will be examples of funeral orations (epitaphioi) honoring fighters killed in war. The most famous one is the speech that the historian Thucydides puts in the mouth of Pericles (494-429 BCE), leader of the Athenian democracy during its golden period.
But the theorizing of epideictic (of which funeral oration is a sub-genre) had to wait until Aristotle (384-322 BCE), whose Rhetoric, the first surviving treatise on the topic, famously divides rhētorikē into three basic types:
"The kinds of Rhetoric are three in number, corresponding to the three kinds of hearers. For every speech is composed of three parts: the speaker, the subject of which he treats, and the person to whom it is addressed, I mean the hearer, to whom the end or object of the speech refers. Now the hearer must necessarily be either a mere spectator or a judge, and a judge either of things past or of things to come. For instance, a member of the general assembly is a judge of things to come; the dicast [juror], of things past; the mere spectator, of the ability of the speaker. Therefore there are necessarily three kinds of rhetorical speeches, deliberative (aka political or symbouleutic), forensic (aka legal), and epideictic.
"The deliberative kind is either hortatory or dissuasive; for both those who give advice in private and those who speak in the assembly invariably either exhort or dissuade. The forensic kind is either accusatory or defensive; for litigants must necessarily either accuse or defend. The epideictic kind has for its subject praise or blame."
The upshot is that, at least for Aristotle, those divisions are largely about the role of the audience, the "person to whom it [a speech] is addressed." Thus, what sets epideictic apart is that its audience, unlike those for legal or political speeches, is there most of all to judge a speaker's skill, which rather assimilates an audience member to a "spectator,"a theōros. That makes epideictic into a kind of "show," with the orator as star, which is to say, as the one "showing off" (epideiknusthai). "Epideictic" means, in fact, "for show." And the proper focus for such speeches is, according to Aristotle, praise or blame, not, as with other genres, giving advice, as in political speeches, or procuring a particular verdict, as in courtroom speeches.
Later, especially Imperial Greek, Epideictic
But that's not the end of our story. In time, the practice speech or meletē, a term often translated as "declamation," would break out of the confines of the classroom into the public arena. Indeed, by the beginning of the second sophistic (first through third centuries CE), meletē, though it never shed its pedagogical role, had blossomed as performance art practiced for its own sake. As performance art, meletē was inherently "epideictic," that is concerned with showing off the rhētōr's skill, no matter what the supposed genre of the speech, which, as we have seen, could pose as a legal pleading or as a political intervention. But meletai, in addition to displaying the orator's skill or sophia, also put paideia on display — paideia in the sense of knowledge of literature, philosophy, history, in short, cultural literacy at a high level. All this was done at least in part for the winning of prestige. If you were competing (and in effect, you were), you were competing against all those with whom you naturally were going to be compared, not mention competing with yourself, as you sought to equal and surpass past achievements.
Rhetoric did not, however, cease to hold practical value. Whether in city assemblies or in the courtroom, speakers needed to know how to speak. Still other speech occasions were decidedly of an epideictic character. Thus we have orations praising people or things (encomia, sometimes called panegyrics), funeral orations (epitaphioi), orations of welcome or farewell for an important personage (epibatēria, propemptikai), and so on.
For a person belonging to a higher stratum of society, the ability to handle oneself in those sorts of situations was important. Consider the case of a speech addressing an emperor. Here, the orator had to share the limelight with someone whose feathers, if ruffled rather than skillfully and judiciously stroked, could do you serious harm. But there was another function that any speech performed before a ruler, especially any speech praising that ruler, performed: that of currying favor with a view to obtaining special concessions or benefits, for oneself or for one's city. Nor was that all. Even if the chief function of imperial addresses was to praise the emperor, the orator might still work in stealthily camouflaged meanings: criticisms or advice couched as subtext or double-speak. Which brings us to our next topic.
Eskhēmatismenos logos, "figured rhetoric"
Eskhēmatismenos logos, or "figured rhetoric," is the art of getting across what you want your audience to hear and to heed, when saying it directly would alienate them. As such, it can perhaps be broken down into two, broadly overlapping categories:
- Argument by bluff. Similar to what's sometimes called reverse psychology, it's a way to argue for something counterintuitive, maybe a little crazy, all the while dropping hints about the thing you actually want your audience to do, the idea being that they'll take the hint and opt for the less crazy thing. Say, for example, you don't want your fellow generals, eager to go to war, to do so. You can use figured rhetoric to seem to argue in favor of the war, affirming that victory will bring all the greater glory, given the odds stacked against your side ("history will long remember your dauntless daring, whatever the outcome"), not to mention the price-tag of the war ("forces never before seen will be mobilized; that alone will earn glory well worth the incalculable cost"). Criticize prudence as a lack of vision, but don't fail to mention that prudence, however boring, will assure success.
- Argument by flattery. This is a way to speak to power when being direct would risk failure, disfavor, or worse. Make sure to praise your addressee, whether an emperor, a governor, or whatever, amply. Remember especially to attribute to your addressee the sorts of qualities and/or actions that you feel they should possess and/or display, whether they actually do or don't. Make the case for those qualities/actions in such a way that your addressee would, for whatever reason, regret not to possess/display them.
Probably, though, there are as many kinds of figured rhetoric are there are occasions for it and addressees to be swayed by it. Lastly, in talking about figured rhetoric, I'm tempted to speak of hidden agendas, but it can't really work if the agenda is hidden so well that no one notices; hence my formulation "(semi-)hidden agenda." On the other hand, should an emperor, a judge, indeed, anyone in power call the speaker's bluff, that could bode poorly for the speaker.
Brief Notes on Ancient Authors and Works
I don't have much to say about our ancient authors, partly because, with one exception, very little is know about them. As for Menander Rhetor, the author of what the Loeb translation calls Treatise One (two are preserved under under Menander's name), I will only echo the Loeb: that the author may have come from Anatolia, perhaps southwest Anatolia (an ancient authority makes Laodicea on the Lycus out to be his native city), and that he likely dates to the late 200s, perhaps to the reign of Diocletian. Both treatises attributed to Menander deal with epideictic rhetoric; what I'm having you read provides an overview of epideictic genre as it was understood in our period.
Pseudo-Dionysius is called "pseudo-" because, though the rhetorical treatise from which you're reading is attributed to Dionysius of Halicarnassus, it clearly isn't by DofH. The Loeb editor-translator dates the treatise to the mid or late third century CE. For us it is useful because it provides guidance as to the topics of praise speeches.
The treatise preserved under the title On Style, and attributed to one Demetrius (whether or not that actually was the author's name), is probably earlier than our period and may date to as early as the second century BCE. The section I've assigned is important because it covers the other topic for today, figured rhetoric.
As far as knowledge of our authors is concerned, Libanius of Antioch (314-393 CE) offers a stark contrast to the preceding. Not only do we possess most of what he wrote (and it is a lot!), much of it is of a biographical character, with more than fifteen hundred letters preserved under Libanius' name, plus a lengthy autobiography in the form of an oration. Though Libanius dates from a period, the 300s CE, following ours, he very much belongs to the same rhetorical tradition as our second-sophistic sophists. He was himself a sophist who taught, performed, and competed fiercely with rivals. Libanius came from Antioch, the chief city of Syria, but whether he was of Syrian, Greek, or some other extraction is hard to say. Certainly, he identified closely with Greek traditions and, in particular, with Greek paideia.
As a teacher, Libanius composed a number of works intended for use in the classroom, including the collection of meletai, "declamations," from which the present piece comes. (Whether Libanius only used the speech in the classroom or maybe also performed it in public is hard to say.) As for the imaginary speaker, he is a parasite; you'll recall that a parasite was someone of low class socially, someone whose living comes, at least in part. from eating dinner with his social betters, and from entertaining them with jokes and similar; often he would have to submit to the abuse, verbal and physical, of host and guests at the dinner. This particular declamation takes the form of a courtroom speech. The procedure is prosangelia or "self-indictment," where the speaker seeks to persuade his audience to impose some sort of sanction on him, usually death by suicide. Despite scanty evidence for prosangelia as a historical reality, in speeches like this one, the speaker bluffs. Thus our parasite doesn't want to to die; he wants something else. Ancient rhetorical treatises in fact treat prosangelia as a chance for the student of rhetoric to practice eskhēmatismenos logos, "figured rhetoric," that is, speech with a (semi-)hidden agenda, for which see above.
Philostratus on figured rhetoric
The following comes from Philostratus' Lives of the Sophists, specifically, from the Life of Herodes Atticus (pages 171-173 Loeb). Summoned to go on trial before the emperor Marcus Aurelius at Sirmium, a military outpost in what is now Serbia (the year is 174 CE, or thereabouts), Herodes stood accused by the Athenians of tyrannical behavior. Herodes had brought with him two girls, servants of his, of whom he was very fond:
". . . Herodes lodged in a suburb in which towers had been erected, some of full height and others half-towers; and there had traveled with him from home two girls, twins just of marriageable age, who were greatly admired for their beauty. Herodes had brought them up from childhood, and appointed them to be his cupbearers and cooks, and used to call them his little daughters and loved them as though they were. They were the daughters of Alcimedon, and he was [an ex-slave] of Herodes. Now while they were asleep in one of the towers which was very strongly built, a thunderbolt struck them in the night and killed them. Herodes was driven frantic by this misfortune, and when he came before the Emperor's tribunal he was not in his right mind but longed for death. For when he came forward to speak he launched into invectives against the Emperor, and did not even use figures of speech in his oration,* though it might have been expected that a man who had been trained in this type of oratory would have had his own anger under control. But with an aggressive and unguarded tongue he persisted in his attack, and cried: 'This is what I get for showing hospitality to Lucius, though it was you who sent him to me! These are the grounds on which you judge men, and you sacrifice me to the whim of a woman and a three-year-old child!' And when Bassaeus, the pretorian prefect, said that he evidently wished to die, Herodes replied: 'My good fellow, an old man fears few things!' With these words Herodes left the court, leaving much of his allowance of water in the clock still to run.** But among the eminently philosophic actions of Marcus we must include his behaviour in this trial. For he never frowned or changed his expression, as might have happened even to an umpire, but he turned to the Athenians and said: 'Make your defence, Athenians, even though Herodes does not give you leave.' "
* The Greek refers to figured rhetoric. The idea is that you normally don't attack the emperor directly to his face; you criticize him obliquely, and in ways that avoid causing offense. Herodes breaks with that practice.
** At a trial a speaker had only limited time to speak. The timing mechanism was a water clock.
We're told that in the end, Marcus decided for the Athenians, but imposed a mild punishment.